Riverkeeper joined the New Yorkers Against Fracking rally in Albany, N.Y., May 15.
Testifies that legislative action on hydrofracking is urgently needed
Riverkeeper testified in Albany today at the Senate Democratic Conference Public Forum on Hydraulic Fracturing along with our partner organizations and fellow advocates.
Riverkeeper urged swift legislative action to address the substantial flaws in the state’s hydrofracking proposal and to end significant gas industry exemptions that exist in the state’s regulations. Specifically, Kate Hudson, Watershed Program Director for Riverkeeper, testified about the urgent need for: a health impact assessment on hydrofracking; closure of a regulatory loophole that currently excludes the gas industry from hazardous waste requirements; clarification of municipal home rule authority; and a moratorium on the issuance of high-volume hydrofracking permits, for at least a year, to provide DEC with the time necessary to address serious deficiencies with its proposal.
Governor Cuomo has insisted that science will determine if New York State allows industrial gas drilling by means of hydrofracking. But he is breaking this pledge by failing to gather all of the facts before making a decision. Riverkeeper urged the Senate today to take advantage of the opportunity to slow down this process and pass legislation this session to protect New Yorker’s health, safety, and environment.
How the gas industry steals from the water budget and leaves us with a toxic waste problem
Every time the gas industry fracks, the public loses. We forfeit an enormous amount of fresh water from our rivers, lakes and streams, and we get a toxic waste disposal nightmare in return.
Rather than acknowledge these losses and work toward real solutions, the gas industry consistently sidesteps these issues, and falsely claims to have fixed them. Recently, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon told us: “We heard that we were using too much water, so today we recycle 90% to 100%.” He later stated: “Then you talk about water consumption, and we start to recycle 99%.” Unfortunately, like so many of the industry’s empty promises, this story is not consistent with the reality of how much water the gas industry uses and how much waste it generates.
First, most of the chemically-laced water used for fracking (as much as eighty-five percent according to Pro Publica reports; other estimates range from 10 to 40 percent), does not return to the surface. Rather, it stays underground, where it can potentially migrate to and pollute fresh water supplies (another serious problem that deserves further discussion). Thus, recycling does not significantly change the amount of fresh water needed to frack a well.
In 2010, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated that 70 to 140 billion gallons of water may be needed to fracture 35,000 wells in the United States each year. This is equivalent to the total amount of water used each year in roughly 40 to 80 cities with a population of 50,000 or about 1 to 2 cities of 2.5 million people. These huge amounts are consumed because approximately 2 to 8 million gallons of water is needed just to frack a single well, which means, assuming only 15% flows back, as much as 6.8 million gallons are lost with each fracture.
Significantly, even with recycling, the waste fluid that flows back will never be returned in any meaningful way to the aquifers, rivers, lakes, and streams from which it was taken. The “recycled” fluid is used by the gas industry for more fracking.
Moreover, given the number of Chesapeake’s active wells versus its recycling capacity, it is unlikely that Chesapeake can ever live up to its promise of recycling 99% of the waste fluid that fracking generates. Chesapeake has not made public the precise percentage of waste it recycles, but last year, the NY Times reported that the overall gas industry in Pennsylvania recycled less than half its waste fluid. Chesapeake now has 216 wells active in Pennsylvania, for which it needs over a billion gallons of water to operate. Chesapeake has an “Aqua Renew” program, which claims to filter and reuse only about 10 million gallons of fluid per month in the Marcellus Shale. That amounts to the flow back from less than approximately 10 wells each month. Likewise, Chesapeake just opened its first and only liquid waste recycling facility in Ohio’s Utica Shale, which, when in full swing, recycles approximately 5 million gallons of fluid per month, less than the flowback from roughly 5 wells.
And, where recycling water does lessen the volume of waste to be disposed of, it generates an additional set of disposal headaches. The “recycling” is more like distillation and it leaves behind highly radioactive and toxic sludge or salts that can be dangerous to people and aquatic life if they get into waterways. Current industry practice is to send this radioactive sludge to landfills, where it will continue to be a toxic menace to the community long after the natural gas has dried up. Other industries would have to ship this radioactive refuse to Idaho or Washington State, at great expense, where there are some of the only landfills permitted to accept such waste. However, since this oil and gas waste is exempt from federal hazardous waste law, gas drillers take advantage of a cheap option – the local landfill. Again, the gas industry wins, and the public loses.
At any rate, contrary to McClendon’s claims, it appears most of the waste fluid is not being recycled. Right now, there are only two other options to dispose of this fluid: ship it to a wastewater treatment plant or an underground injection well. Although, in theory, both sound like viable options, the devil is in the details.
Sending the waste fluid to a wastewater treatment plant is a nonstarter. New York does not have a single wastewater treatment plant equipped to handle fracking waste and Pennsylvania no longer allows fracking waste to be sent to its treatment plants. For the three years preceding Pennsylvania’s directive, more than 1.3 billion gallons of fracking waste fluid was produced in the state and most of it — enough to cover Manhattan in three inches — was sent to treatment plants not equipped to remove toxics found in drilling waste, which in turn, discharge the waste into the state’s waterways.
The second disposal option, underground injection wells, has revealed its own set of problems. This process, which involves injecting the wastewater into the earth under extreme pressure, has been linked to earthquakes in Ohio, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Texas. An underground injection well in Youngstown, Ohio, was recently shut down for study after the area experienced a 4.0 earthquake. The earthquake problem is symptomatic of the unregulated gas industry; since gas drillers are exempt from key provisions of federal hazardous waste law, they are also exempt from the earthquake prevention rules typically applicable to underground fluid injections. To compound matters, disposing of the fracking waste from New York and Pennsylvania requires trucking it potentially long distances to underground injection wells in other states, severely increasing the risk of potentially disastrous accidents or spills.
Even worse, some states permit the extremely salty and potentially radioactive brine that is a toxic byproduct of fracking, to be spread on our roads. New York currently allows brine from conventional drilling to be spread on the road as a de-icer and dust suppressant. It has left the door open to spreading brine from high-volume fracking with more data – a practice which Pennsylvania currently allows via a general permit.
What we need now is for our governments—federal and state—to make the industry face its water and waste problems head on. EPA announced last fall that it will develop standards for sending fracking waste to wastewater treatment plants, but it does not plan to release these measures until 2014. New York State has refused to address this issue all together, and has put forth no plan for dealing with the billions of gallons of waste that will be generated if it allows high-volume fracking to move forward.
Until we start a serious conversation on this issue, the gas companies will continue to sweep billions of gallons of toxic, radioactive waste under the carpet. And we’ll be left to clean up the mess, long after they have moved on.
Originally posted on Media Matters
April 13, 2012 2:15 pm ET by Salvatore Colleluori
The New York Post, the New York-based daily newspaper run by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., has published 21 opinion pieces on the controversial process of natural gas extraction called hydraulic fracturing (or ‘fracking’) since January 1, 2011.* Many of the op-eds on fracking attack Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) or “enviro-radicals” for not acting faster to cash in on the economic benefits associated with domestic drilling. In addition, the Post almost always fails to acknowledge the health and environmental risks associated with fracking — when it does, it immediately dismisses the dangers, despite ample evidence to the contrary. For example:
The fact is, fracking has proved not only to be a fundamentally safe undertaking, it has delivered immense economic benefits to localities across America.
New York is the only state in the nation where it is not allowed — and that needs to change.
The fear-mongering nihilism that has marked the debate so far needs to end – and, at the very least, it’s up to Cuomo to accelerate the current review.
And here:
Indeed, not only would New York become a major new source of relatively clean energy – natural gas; the move is also sure to spawn a whole new industry for economically sclerotic Upstate, generating thousands of jobs.
That’s what’s happened elsewhere in the country where fracking is allowed – including, notably, neighboring Pennsylvania, where tens of thousands of workers have found jobs at companies that employ the process.
Alas, in New York, enviro-radicals got then-Gov. David Paterson to ban the process, pending further study.
They claim that fracking can taint drinking water. Hyperbolic media reports and films like the pseudo-documentary “Gaslands” further fueled public fears.
Yes, there have been fracking accidents — but no lasting damage, and no harm has been done to water supplies.
Contrary to the Post’s assertions, there have been a host of environmental problems associated with fracking. Wyoming is dealing with both groundwater contamination and air pollution, Ohio and Oklahoma have seen earthquakes potentially associated with fracking, and groundwater contamination has affected wells in Pennsylvania and other areas around fracking wells.
The Post also gets its facts wrong when it comes to states that have banned fracking. In Feburary, New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie imposed a one-year ban on the practice in New Jersey, stating, “Potential environmental concerns with fracking in our state must be studied and weighed carefully against the potential benefits of increasing access to natural gas in New Jersey.”
As Media Matters has previously noted, in their fervor to promote fracking, the Post has even gone so far as to hide the industry funding of fracking studies in their editorials.
* The Media Matters analysis was conducted by doing a Nexis search for the terms “hydraulic fracturing” or “fracking” and analyzing the number of times one or both of those terms was used in an opinion piece published by the Post.
It’s like the gas industry and their apologists are living in a different universe from the rest of us, when it comes to the risks from shale gas extraction via fracking. Call it the “Spin Zone.”
At a Wall Street Journal conference last week, Chesapeake Energy CEO Aubrey McClendon told attendees: “I don’t know of any problem with air pollution from fracking in Fort Worth” Texas. McClendon peevishly referred to air pollution concerns raised by Riverkeeper President Paul Gallay [whom McClendon refused to share the stage with] as “environmental nonsense.” Since then, industry-sponsored posts like this and this argue against links between fracking and air pollution.
Well, read on. Then decide who’s spouting “nonsense”:
- TCEQ’s latest estimates of air emissions tell us that oil and gas operations in the Dallas-Fort Worth region emit more smog-causing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) than all cars, trucks, buses, and other mobile sources in the area combined (114 tons per day of VOCs for oil and gas production and drilling versus 80 tons per day of VOCs for mobile sources). These same statistics show that VOCs associated with oil and gas production have increased 60% since 2006.
- In 2011, Dallas-Fort Worth violated federal ozone standards on more days than anywhere else in Texas, including Houston. Ozone, a corrosive gas that can exacerbate asthma and other respiratory diseases, is created when VOCs like petroleum hydrocarbons mix with heat and sunlight. Dallas is a “particularly extreme case,” of recent increases in air pollution in Texas, according to David Allen, a chemical engineering professor and state air-quality program director.
- In Texas, which had about 93,000 natural-gas wells in 2011, up from around 58,000 a dozen years ago, a hospital system in six counties with some of the heaviest drilling, including the Barnett Shale region, said in 2010 that it found “children in the community ages 6-9 are three times more likely to have asthma than the average for that age group in the State of Texas.” According to Baylor University, in 2009, childhood asthma rates in Tarrant County, part of the Barnett Shale, were more than double the national average, prompting a new study to evaluate asthma and pollution sources.
- In 2010, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) found two gas fields with extremely high levels of benzene and another 19 with elevated levels among the 94 it tested in the Barnett Shale. According to TCEQ toxicologist Shannon Ethridge, their analysis in the Barnett Shale have shown “some of the highest benzene concentrations we have monitored in the state.”
Up north in the Mountain States, the problem is just as serious:
- According to a 2012 study from the Colorado School of Public Health, cancer risks were 66% higher for residents living less than half a mile from oil and gas wells than for those living farther away, with benzene being the major contributor to the increased risk. This same study reminds us that chronic exposure to ozone, prevalent at gas production sites, can lead to asthma and pulmonary diseases, particularly in children and the aged.
- A recent study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (“NOAA”) found elevated levels of methane coming from well sites in Northeastern Colorado. NOAA scientists say initial results from another study show high concentrations of butane, ethane and propane in Erie, east of Boulder, where hundreds of natural-gas wells are operating.” “We are finding a huge amount of methane and other chemicals coming out of the natural-gas fields,” said Russell Schnell, a NOAA scientist in Boulder. The NOAA study estimates that gas producers in this area are losing about 4% of gas to the atmosphere – not including losses in the pipeline and distribution system.
- Levels of ozone in Wyoming’s fracking country are higher than in Los Angeles (Wyoming levels have been as high as 124 parts per billion, two-thirds higher than the federal EPA’s maximum healthy limit). In 2009, Wyoming’s environmental agency concluded “that elevated ozone at the Boulder [Wyoming] monitor is primarily due to local emissions from oil and gas (O&G) development activities: drilling, production, storage, transport, and treating.“
Finally, let’s not forget the 2011 Duke University study proving that drinking water wells near fracking sites have 17 times more methane than wells not located near fracking, and that this extra methane has a chemical fingerprint showing that it’s been brought up from deep drilling zones. Fracking operations have generated billions of gallons of radiation-laced toxic wastewater that we can’t manage properly and forced families to abandon their homes because of dangerous levels of arsenic, benzene and toluene in their blood.
The drillers remain in deep denial, routinely choosing to “circle the wagons” rather than to acknowledge environmental and public health problems. As a Wall Street Journal conference blogger pointedly observed, after McClendon was accused of denying problems and demonizing critics, his next move was to do just that: deny and demonize.
Well, the WSJ conference attendees weren’t buying the drillers’ “don’t worry, just buy more gas” message. After Thursday’s debate with Riverkeeper, an astonishing 49% of this business-friendly audience said that we need federal regulation of the gas industry. Only 7% thought the answer to our
problems lies with self-regulation by the frackers.
Fracking and its impact on public health, in particular our children’s health, is a serious issue that calls for swift action—action that the gas industry has repeatedly tried to block. As we write this, in New York, the industry is fighting against a legislative proposal for a public health impact assessment which hundreds of medical professionals have joined community activists and environmentalists in supporting.
The frackers can spin the issue all they want, but the public isn’t buying it. They know where the “nonsense” is coming from.
How does the CEO of a major fracking company react when asked to publicly answer to facts about the true environmental and economic cost of hydraulic fracturing?
The same way frackers react to the contaminated drinking water and wrecked communities they leave in their wake: Avoid the issue, deny the truth and duck from scrutiny.
When Aubrey K. McClendon, chairman and CEO of Chesapeake Energy, learned Paul Gallay, Hudson Riverkeeper, would be part of his panel discussion at today’s Wall Street Journal ECO:nomics conference, he reportedly threw a fit and refused to share the stage. But Gallay got five minutes to grill him and his industry mate Edward E. Cohen, president and CEO of Atlas Energy, to challenge him on key facts.
Facts like: drinking water wells near fracking sites have 17 times more methane than wells farther away, according to a Duke University study. Smog is worse in Wyoming fracking country than in downtown Los Angeles. The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality says fracking account for more air pollution in the Fort Worth area than cars, trucks, planes and buses combined.
And the low price of natural gas the frackers trumpet as such a benefit for the U.S. consumer? Don’t expect it to last. Once frackers gain market share, through exports, use in vehicles or other markets—which panelists promised, at the conference, to do—expect the price to skyrocket. Just like asthma rates in Texas hydrofracking country. Gallay likened it to a bad adjustable rate mortgage that ultimately bankrupts the public.
McClendon’s response? He dismissed it as “environmental nonsense.” He said he hadn’t heard of one environmental problem from his company’s fracking wells.
Then again, he couldn’t even recall the money his company had showered on politicians to win their support, either.
Not surprisingly, the audience wasn’t convinced by McClendon’s thin argument. Asked to weigh in real time, nearly 95% said either the federal government or the states should regulate the industry.
Frackers call their gas a gift. If it’s a gift it’s a Trojan Horse.
On Friday, February 24, New York Supreme Court Justice Donald F. Cerio, Jr., upheld the town of Middlefield’s ban on natural gas development within its borders, just three days after Justice Phillip R. Rumsey upheld Dryden’s nearly identical ban. The Dryden and Middlefield decisions are the first to consider whether municipalities in New York may exercise their home rule authority to zone out natural gas development, and these initial rulings may embolden many town officials, previously unsure about their authority, to ban natural gas drilling within their municipalities.
We anticipate that the Dryden plaintiff, a Colorado-based gas company, and Middlefield plaintiff, Cooperstown Holstein Corporation (owned by Jennifer Huntington, a farmer who has leased her land), will both appeal the decisions. Thus, while this is a victory, we again urge you to call your State Senator and Assembly Member and ask them to pass the Home Rule Bill, A8557/A3245/S5380, which would legislatively guarantee your municipality’s right to protect you from fracking! You can find your Senator’s contact information here and your Assembly Member’s here.
In the first ruling on whether local governments can limit gas drilling, or hydraulic fracturing (fracking), through local zoning ordinances in New York, Judge Phillip R. Rumsey of the Sixth Judicial District of the New York Supreme Court upheld the Town of Dryden’s ban on gas development within its borders. The court granted summary judgment for Dryden, holding that New York’s Oil, Gas and Solution Mining Law does not preempt, or supersede, municipal zoning rights. The decision relied on previous cases in which New York courts affirmed municipalities’ rights to ban mining activities through land use regulation.
The court’s decision reaffirmed the long-standing practice of New York towns exercising their zoning authority against heavy industry, and in favor of local protection of residents and existing industries, such as agriculture, wineries, tourism and recreational land uses. Without municipal zoning rights, corporations could drill and frack near homes, schools, hospitals, and religious institutions.
This is only round one in the fight. We anticipate that Plaintiff Anschutz Exploration will appeal the decision. A similar action brought by Cooperstown Holstein Corporation against the Town of Middlefield also remains pending before Judge Donald Cerio of the Sixth Judicial District New York Supreme Court.
Riverkeeper and other organizations will continue to fight to uphold municipal rights. Meanwhile, we need you to urge your State Senator to pass the Home Rule Bill, S5380, which would legislatively guarantee your municipality’s right to protect you from fracking! You can find your Senator’s contact information here.
During a Bar Association panel discussion on Wednesday, New York State confirmed that its environmental review on fracking will be finished this Spring. If we don’t stop it, fracking is coming to New York this Summer. The battle is on to preserve our health, water and environment!
Read Riverkeeper’s statement, and find out what you can do to take action today!
What it means for the protection of NY’s water bodies from fracking and other high-water usage activities
Last summer, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed New York’s first-ever uniform water use management legislation, closing the loophole that long allowed high-volume water withdrawers to pump large amounts of water out of New York’s water bodies without regard for protections to natural resources and aquatic life. The new law, which took effect Feb. 15, 2012, mandates that operators of oil and gas production facilities, power plants, golf courses, snow-making facilities, mining operations, water bottlers and other commercial and industrial entities seeking to withdraw more than 100,000 gallons-a-day must first secure a Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) permit. Existing water withdrawers will be entitled to an initial permit, for a limited term.
Since high-volume hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) associated with natural gas production requires millions of gallons of water per well, fracking and water withdrawal issues are inextricably related. This legislation should provide crucial protections to the state’s water bodies and aquatic life, which are currently under threat from the prospect of fracking moving forward in New York.
To implement this law, DEC proposed draft regulations that would establish the water withdrawal permitting program on Nov. 23, 2011. Riverkeeper filed comments on these draft regulations on Feb. 6 aimed at fully protecting our water bodies from the threat of fracking and other high-volume water uses. Our comments emphasize that while the draft regulations go far to establish a solid program to oversee large-scale water withdrawals, there are a number of significant changes that must be made before they can be considered adequately protective of the environment and sustainable in the long-term. Riverkeeper urged DEC to make several changes to the regulations; our top five include:
- DEC’s proposed scheduling for issuing permits to existing water withdrawals is unacceptable. The draft regulations would allow some existing water withdrawals to withdraw water for five years at existing levels before obtaining a permit. Riverkeeper has recommended an aggressive schedule, which would require all water withdrawers to submit permit applications in the next 15 months.
- DEC should impose permit fees and fees based on consumptive use. The draft regulations fail to propose any permit application fee or fees for water usage, despite the known need for funds to implement the program.
- DEC should impose a water conservation and efficiency program. The water withdrawal legislation mandates that DEC establish a conservation and efficiency program, but the regulations fail to do so. DEC should set statewide goals for water conservation and efficiency.
- DEC should mandate water conservation. The draft regulations require each permit applicant to submit a “water conservation plan,” but the regulations are unclear as to whether water withdrawers are then required to implement that plan.
- Monitoring records should be kept with DEC, not the water withdrawer, and made available to the public upon request. The draft regulations require the water withdrawer to self-monitor and retain records of all monitoring information. By failing to require that DEC maintain its own copy of records, the draft regulations render such documents publicly inaccessible. Water withdrawers should be required to submit all monitoring records on a monthly basis to DEC and DEC should make such records easily available to the public.
Permitting of water withdrawals will only begin once DEC finalizes the regulations, so Riverkeeper has urged DEC to act swiftly to implement stringent regulations incorporating the changes identified above, in addition to the other significant deficiencies we identified in our comments.